Cartooning: Character Design (HT291) (How to Draw & Paint) Paperback – April 1, 2006

Just to give this review some context, I'm a professor of information systems, film, & digital media and my specialty is 3D virtual worlds. Even though I work mainly in the 3D realm creating practical artifacts vs. innovative art, I enjoy books on (2D) drawing because they contain important fundamentals that translate well into the 3D world.What makes this book different from other character drawing books is two things: (1) the focus on "beans" (variations of) as the foundation for drawing faces and bodies; (2) the emphasis and examples on building emotions into character faces and bodies. True, Preston Blair covered bean style drawing in Cartoon Animation, but Sherm Cohen goes into more depth as well as covering all the basic body and facial features including hands, feet, eyes, noses, mouths, etc.The teaching style is wonderful. The author typically starts from first principles, then shows how to combine these principles to create more complex drawings. As an example, in the mood section the authors shows an expressionless face. He then shows how to tweak facial features to create the six basic emotions. The examples are shown in such a way that anyone reading and following along can easily draw variations of the six basic emotions. After you master that, the author describes four techniques for creating more variations of the six basic emotions: asymmetry, amplification, intensity, and combination.The bottom line: anyone can pick up this short book and start drawing entertaining characters in under an hour or so. Even if you never intend to draw cartoons for a living, there is tremendous benefit in knowing these techniques for, say, storyboarding videos or for adding your own characters to your powerpoint or other presentations.In fact, I am going to recommend this book to my digital marketing students, as a technique they can use to draw storyboards quickly for the commercials they create.I implore the author (Sherm Cohen) to create one more book on background design, that covers perspective, cartoon buildings, and everyday objects.

I purchased the kindle version a couple weeks ago and will be ordering the printed book in the near future just to have a copy. I have nearly every quality cartooning book published, and while all encompassing they tend to complicate the process with too many illustrations, too much talking, too many diagrams, and just too much stuff as far as I'm concerned. This book is the opposite, it is clear, simple, and concise. You will learn the fundamental truths about cartooning that will aid you your entire life and/or career as a cartoonist. This is the most efficient book on cartooning and character design that I've seen, even if you're not into this style of cartooning it makes little to no difference. You can apply the knowledge in this book to painting with ketchup if you so desire. Without a doubt this is my favorite book on cartooning and design.One time through and it's obvious the author has spent considerable time honing his teaching ability. It's rare that someone with a high level of skill can express themselves adequately enough to teach, let alone to teach well, that by itself makes this book worth buying. It is not a step by step how to draw cartoons book, it's a step by step how to expressively design cartoons book. It is a masterpiece in my opinion, and part of the reason is the length of the book, only 32 pages, it's hardly any longer than a comic book.This book is the "20% effort for 80% of your results" type of book. This is the only one you'll need for cartooning. One word? Efficient.

This is an outstanding piece of work in teaching character design/cartooning. Only a person with tremendous experience can produce all the essentials in just 32 pages !!Format: The book is Large! 13.7 x 10.1, the drawings are so clear in this format, which is very important, for us to study and draw. We can just keep it open and start drawing. Drawings are all either in pencil or in black india ink using a brush, which is simply lovely.Concise: The book is small! :) only 30 pages. so it is very easy to work it through, refer, study and learn. no page is wasted. each page is packed with plenty of drawings with detailed notes, that are so refined and upto the point!Clear: The large format, clear lines and step by step approach, makes this book so clear and easy to follow.Workbook: The approach of the book is to take us in a workbook manner, as you study, draw, redraw, practice each of the pages progressively you will get to learn about various aspects of character design (and cartooning) is systematic manner. learning and mastering basic shapes, the Head, the features of the head, variations, body shapes, "Types", body language etc.. and if one sincerly works this book through, one would have become a character designer !.This would form perfect platform to launch into cartooning, animation and more advanced character design through books such as , Cartoon Animation (The Collector's Series) , The Animator's Survival Kit--Revised Edition: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators , Creating Characters with Personality: For Film, TV, Animation, Video Games, and Graphic Novels Sherm Cohen and Walter Foster.. Thank you!

I purchased this book several weeks ago and have not put it down since. I carry it around with my sketchbook and practice the exercises out of it as often as I can. I am an Illustrator and also an art teacher for kids. I used the book to create lessons for my 4th graders too. They loved it! It is written in a way where it's simple and straightforward to both learn the art of Character Design or to improve your skills. I recommend it to all age and skill levels. Great book for your reference library!

I wanted a book on character design to help with my own cartoons and also to encourage my children to have a go! I have seen Sherm's work before and he often shares his tips and encouragement with others online. This book is a wonderful companion to keep handy while working, full of character design examples and tips and easy to learn techniques (not full of boring instructional text, which is great as it keeps the kids interested while they create their own characters!)I would recommend this to anybody who draws and loves cartoons.

I have tried many similar books before in the hope to improve my drawing style but it never seem to be helping much. This book on the contrary, has helped me hugely.It's fun, full of great examples to inspire you and is exhaustive despite its thinness.I recommend it massively! It's made by the guy who draws Spongebob! You can't go wrong when you know that!

Really informative and clear to read - using it as a reference but would also be nice to work through from start to finish.

Good descriptions

Looks like a great book. Bought as Xmas present for my son & sure he will enjoy it.